One series of pictures I have been looking for on the web - which I found once and can't find any more - is one that someone did to show the relative sizes and distances of the horizon and features in various Apollo surface photos. Since there's no air to provide haze, one of our visual cues of distance, you have a real hard time judging how big or far away things are in the photos. This person Photoshopped in the "HOLLYWOOD" sign at the appropriate scale in various photos, which was a stark reminder just how big those mountains are.

Here is an attempt to get the best of both film formats available to the Apollo 12 view of the eclipse of the Sun by Earth On November 24, 1969 as Apollo 12 was returning from the second Lunar expedition. Only 16 mm color film (reversal?) and B&W 70 mm film was available to record the scene, well supplimented by the excellent descriptions given by Alan Bean and the others at the time. Bean has since painted his recalled visual impressions. The B&W frame supplies the resolution, the 16mm, plus the descriptions of the astronauts, the colors. Note the pair of 'Sun reflections', which provide images of the solar disks themselves. The oval one on the left is from the color 16mm frame made while the Sun was still partly visable but quite distorted, the linear right reflection is from the high resolution 70mm frame, shot as the Sun was physically hidden but strongly refracted by the atmosphere. I hope to later obtain better scans of the 16mm film of varying exposures. The color frame I used as an element in this composite image, heavily repainted to fill in details described at the time but not visible in the photography, originated in a scan included in the Apollo image archive.

Excellent work, Don! I know that the Apollo 12 crew was frustrated over their attempts to capture that eclipse. In fact, here is a short excerpt from the post-flight debriefing on the subject:

CONRAD: We want to talk about the solar eclipse and the fact that we were all caught with our pants down. We should have had good camera settings and film available for that because it was certainly a spectacular sight.

GORDON: I feel very strongly about this. I think that someone, the crew as much as anyone, really dropped the ball on this. We knew this was going to occur before the flight and we mentioned it. The people who are interested in this kind of thing, if there was any interest, were very remiss in not planning further for this particular event. To us, it was one of the most spectacular things we saw throughout the entire flight. I'm sure there's obviously some scientific value in this type of thing. However, the reaction in this regard was virtually nil. In conjunction with this the response of the people on the ground, at the time that we reported this, was extremely poor. The crew was left on their own entirely to come up with guesses on camera settings, films, and film speeds. Repeated inquiries to the ground took a considerable length of time before any information was gotten out of the ground at all as to what type of film, what exposure, and what time settings to use on the cameras. It was a very poorly handled phenomenon we all knew about before flight.

-the other Doug

--------------------

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain

My first serious attempt in creating an anaglyph using Apollo imagery, don't know what you experts think about it. Any ideas/critique is appreciated! I used two images that were taken by the Commander and the LM pilot after EVA 3. So this is the Apollo 17 landing site as seen with the "eyes" of Challenger.

Useful suppliments to the photography, although the transcript of the actual observations tend to hold the most weight with me as a primary source. I would like to obtain a satellite map of the clouds that day before trying to reconstruct the view. Where mightI find one?

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
Images posted on UnmannedSpaceflight.com may be copyrighted.
Do not reproduce without permission. Read
here for further information on space images and copyright.

OPINIONS AND MODERATION
Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the
individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions
of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer
UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent
of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence
over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators.

SUPPORT THE FORUM
Unmannedspaceflight.com is a project of the Planetary Society
and is funded by donations from visitors and members. Help keep
this forum up and running by contributing
here.